OPINION

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By Peyton Dunn

The current college sports landscape is shifting in ways that are unprecedented. Name, Image, and Likeness (NIL) policies are becoming more and more important, while transferring from school to school is becoming almost an annual occurrence for the average NCAA athlete. Arguably the most exciting topic for college sports fans is what has been labeled as conference realignment. 

In the world of sports, the word “conference” signifies a collection of teams who play each other inside of a league. In the case of college football, for example, Division I-A is divided into 11 conferences, and teams play a majority of their games against the other teams in their conference.

Since the origin of these conferences, the general idea was to select teams that were in proximity to each other, so that the transit for teams to compete would be easier. These 18-22-year-old student athletes have classes to take, on top of the work they put in as an athlete. For sports like basketball or softball, that play multiple games against multiple teams in a week, it doesn’t logistically make sense for them to have to travel long distances multiple times.

USC Trojans versus UCLA Bruins, November 17, 2018 at The Rose Bowl in Pasadena, California. Photo credit: Steve Cheng, Bruin Report Online via flickr.

However, the revenue gap between football and any other collegiate sport continues to exponentially increase, and this has led to some of the most influential colleges making changes to their conference. The University of Southern California (USC) has been a blue blood in the world of college sports. Over their extended history, all of their sports have competed in the PAC-12 conference, which is made up of West Coast teams, making travel for away games relatively easy and accessible. During this off-season, however, USC and UCLA (University of California Los Angeles) decided they will be competing in the BIG-10 conference from now on. The BIG-10 is made up of teams primarily from the Midwest and Northeast. These schools made this decision with a 100% focus on their football programs. 

USC’s baseball program played 68 baseball games over a four-month period. That averages out to (roughly) four to five games in a seven-day span. Most of the teams they would play were in a close enough range to where these players could compete, return home, sleep, and take their classes the next day. Oregon, one of their more distant competitors, is a two-hour flight. They travel, play, and travel back. With their new entrance to the BIG-10, this time table will drastically change. Rutgers, Michigan State, Michigan and Penn State are at least four hours away by air. These games will often be played on a school night, with classes the next morning. It might be near impossible for a student athlete to fly there and back, give their all in their competitions, find time to take care of themselves both physically and, more importantly, mentally, and finally take time to do their school assignments. 

The conference realignment is completely driven by the desire to increase the economic production of a school’s football team. Changing conferences provides more popular games against tougher opponents on larger stages, and in front of larger television and streaming audiences also. In the case of the football program, the players only play once a week, so attending most of their classes likely is not a problem. From a football perspective, it might make sense for both the players and the school. But with other sports, such as softball, baseball, basketball, why put the students through that?